


No Signal

by Sour_Idealist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5 Times Fic, F/M, Phone Calls & Telephones, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-09
Updated: 2012-06-09
Packaged: 2017-11-07 08:12:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sour_Idealist/pseuds/Sour_Idealist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Dean Winchester <em>almost</em> proved Jo Harvelle wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Signal

_“I’ll call.”_

_A door slams shut._

_“No, you won’t.”_

**i.**

“Hey,” Dean mouths, turning the phone over and over in his hand, sweat-sticky and warm against his palm. “Just thought I’d let you know Sam’s okay, he had a demon riding him, ‘s all it was.” He sighs, closes his eyes and slumps back against the headboard, tapping the phone against the mattress. “Shoulder’s healing up fine, I guess you did a good job there after all – still hurt like hell, though –” The nightstand boasts an orange painkiller bottle a little past its sell-by date, he’s fuzzy-headed and so tired it aches, and he keeps tossing the phone in his hands. “Anyway, figured I’d check in. Tell you we made it out.”

A knock on the door interrupts him, and he blinks, dropping the phone by his side as he calls, “Yeah?” Bobby pokes his head around the door, whiskers bristling like a concerned porcupine.

“You all right in here?”

“Yeah, yeah, just tired.” Dean shrugs, glances at his boots resting on Bobby’s quilt and swings his knees over the edge of the bed. “Sorry, wasn’t thinking. Sammy doing all right?”

“Had to wash that anyway,” Bobby says, waving a hand. Dean snorts and drags a boot off anyway, remembering the Rules when he was younger. “Yeah, he’s fine, out like a light again.” He scratches his ear, eying the wall. “Just got off the phone with Ellen – said Jo filled her in on some of it, I told her what I know, sounded like she picked up most of it from there. She said to say hello.”

Dean sighs, dropping his other boot to the floor; his phone, still closed, bumps against his hip as he leans back. “Yeah, well, thank her for me when you talk to her again. Jo too-oah,” he adds, stretching the word around a yawn, and slumps back, eyes falling closed.

“Tell her yourself,” Bobby sighs, but Dean’s already half-under.

**ii.**

In a diner two hours out from Springfield, Ohio, Dean chases salt across a chipped-up diner plate with a French fry and asks Bobby, “So how come Sam and I never heard about this Trickster crap?”

Bobby shrugs, slathering another dose of dressing on his withered chicken salad. “Dunno. They’re not that common, really, I don’t think there are that many of ‘em.” The edge of his mustache twitches. “And most hunters don’t like to talk about ‘em. Make a lot of us look damn stupid.”

“That’s a relief,” Sam mumbles around a mouthful of hash browns. “Kind of.” Dean shrugs, inhaling another couple of fries without actually tasting them, and tilts his head while he chews.

“What’s on your mind, boy?” Bobby asks, nudging him with the tip of his boot, and Dean jumps, nearly choking on his mouthful of pummeled potato.

“Nothing, Jesus!” He sprays a last few crumbs across the table in spite of himself, too.

“Probably the waitress’s ass,” Sam grumbles, forking up a lump of presumable eggs; Bobby whacks him on the shoulder without so much as turning around, earning a squawk, and Dean grins.

“I wanna be _him_ when I grow up,” he informs Sam, jabbing an indicative fry towards Bobby, who snorts and rolls his eyes.

“Idjit,” he says, settling back a bit and dropping his fork on the sad remains of his salad. “You’re not fooling me, either, you were thinking about something. Spill.”

“Nothing big,” Dean protests, abandoning his fries for another bite of his half-demolished burger. “Just wondering if Jo knew about these douchebags,” he says around his mouthful, earning him a disgusted look from Sam, because he’s Miss Manners now. “What? There a problem?”

“You’re wondering if Jo knows about them,” Sam says slowly. “ _Why?_ ”

“Because I wanted to know, okay!” Dean snaps. “That guy was kind of a nasty piece of work, all right? I mean, the alien thing – look, I was just wondering if she knew, Jesus.”

“I didn’t realize you were thinking about her so much,” Sam says slowly, hand frozen on his fork; Dean throws up his hands.

“I’m not! It was _just a thought,_ okay – I mean, maybe the anthropology major looked like her, huh? Or this place smells like the Roadhouse or something, you were the one blabbing about smell and memory and crap like that –”

“She did _not_ ,” Sam protests, wrinkling his nose, and Dean rolls his eyes, shoving his chair back.

“Yeah, well, you remembered her as Boozehead Barbie, so I’m not gonna call you the most reliable witness –”

“You remembered yourself as denim James Bond!”

“I’m about to tell both of you to sit in the corner,” Bobby growls, pulling his hat low over his head. “Jesus.”

“Sorry, Bobby,” the two of them chorus, and he snorts, unwinding a bit. Twenty minutes later they’ve cajoled him into explaining how _he_ learned about tricksters, Dean’s laughing so hard he can’t see straight, and his phone is still folded up in his pocket, untouched and forgotten.

**iii.**

Sam’s sprawled out in the Impala’s passenger seat, skin bleached out with the intermittent streetlights and he looks like somebody punched him, the shadows under his eyes are so damn bad. There’s still a hickey on his neck, a perfectly normal kind of not-at-all-innocent that makes Dean shiver, because technically speaking a werewolf _bit_ his _brother,_ and technically speaking he’s looking at marks a dead girl left, and he hates 2 a.m. roads in Kansas because crap like this always happens.

There’s a gas station on the left, and the fuel gauge is dipping low; he pulls over, eases the door open so he doesn’t wake Sammy up. The fluorescent splots against the ground like a puddle of seriously messed-up piss in the endless freaking night, and he can’t see anyone around, not even in the scraped-up convenience store that looks held together by duct tape and cardboard.

The gas pump glugs away at his hip, gas cap crammed under the pump. He sighs, whistling some song he can’t quite name as he leans against the side of the car and stares up at the murky sky. His pockets are full of crap: couple loops of wire, extra fake I.D., keys, spare salt, knife, extra cartridge, phone…

He tugs the last out, flips it in his free hand and squints at the slowly, slowly climbing numbers on the gas pump. “Jesus, slowest thing I’ve ever seen,” he mutters; the wind whistles back at him, mocking. “Yeah, screw you too.”

He scrolls through the contacts on his phone just for the sake of something to do: hunters, a couple bar hookups he half-remembers, his father’s number still hidden with the rest of the list, four different ways to reach Bobby, the Roadhouse…

Jo Cell.

He taps his thumb against the button, gnawing at his lip; she’ll be on her own somewhere, from what he’s heard, nobody to wake (and yell at him for calling in the middle of the goddamn night) and for all he knows she’s in back-ass nowhere too, feeling like someone or other could’ve popped down and grabbed everybody off the face of the Earth with nothing but a word on a post left behind.

The gas pump clicks, and he sighs, pocketing the phone and flipping it closed in the same motion. Whatever, just as likely she’s on stakeout and all he’ll do by calling is scare off some touchy spook that she’s been chasing for a week.

**iv** **.**

Dean kicks at the blankets aroun his feet, arm itching where the djinn’s I.V. bit at him – Jesus Christ, how much can a needle that small even do? His wrists are chafed and stinging too; shoulders wrenched, throat raw. He’s slept with worse, by a lot; slept with broken ribs and an ankle pointing half around and a baseball-sized lump hot to the touch on his bicep. (Not all at once.)

He closes his eyes and his mom’s hand brushes against his cheek, Sam looks at him like he’s a rotting rat, Jess smiles at him on his brother’s arm. (Some days he can’t remember if he ever said anything to her beyond _hi, I love the Smurfs_ , but damn if it didn’t feel familiar to see her).

Screw this. He shoves the covers off, half-catapulting out of bed as quietly as he can manage. Sam’s snoring, a quiet snuffling sound, and Dean’s gotten used to keeping quiet while his brother sleeps. He digs out his duffel and rummages through, chucking clothes onto the bed.

“Outta beer, left the porn in the car… no juice.” He drops his Walkman onto a half-clean shirt, shaking his head. “C’mon.” He should grab one of those little puzzle things you can carry around; shouldn’t be too hard to shoplift one.

He sighs and collapses back onto the mattress, old springs creaking; something digs into his ass, and he rolls over, batting at the place he sat. His jeans, phone in the pocket – huh, juice in that, at least. Sucks that he can’t switch batteries with the Walkman. He taps the edge against his stomach, closing his eyes again.

_Dad smiles up from a picture frame, Mom ruffles his hair and laughs at the both of them, a woman he’s only seen in a magazine smiles and curls against his shoulder like they both belong exactly where they are –_

“ _Fuck,_ ” he mutters, opening his eyes, and flips the phone open, skimming past name after name, slowing at the H’s and then, remembering, scrolling – aimlessly – back up to the C’s, under Cell.

What time is it where Jo is, anyway? Not even all that late. He wonders what she studied in school when she was there, if she had time to pick something before she ditched the whole shebang. He could ask. Be something to talk about, anyway. He could pass on what they’d picked up about the djinn, too – more information’s always good.

Back in Philadelphia, her hair tickled his arm, stuck to his jacket like he’d covered the thing in glue. It probably wouldn’t feel bad tickling the top of his arm – a little scratchy maybe, kind of like a wool blanket. Just rough enough that you didn’t stop noticing it was there.  She’d probably look as good in medical scrubs as anyone could, too, all prickly and pale and pretty under the weird colors, hands quick and effective if not gentle.

Fuck, but he’s tired. He drops the phone – it clunks softly as it hits the carpet – and rolls over, wrapping the blanket over his shoulders. He’s _got_ to fall asleep sooner or later.

**v.**

It’s a cold night in Wyoming and Dean leans back against the nearest gravestone, tries to stop the shaking, and pretends not to notice Bobby letting go of Ellen’s hand. Sam’s doing a crap job at the same thing, and somehow they all wind up staring at the circle of muddy ground between them. Everyone last one of them looks kind of the same right now: slumped shoulders and sweat-soaked hair, scorched palms and too-bright eyes. Dean sighs.

It’s Bobby – of course it’s Bobby – who finally shrugs, shoves back his cap and says, half-choked and hoarse, “Well, crap.”

Dean’s mouth quirks; he shakes his head, shoving himself a little straighter. “Looks like we’ve got an Easter egg hunt.”  

“Yup.” Bobby sighs, and Sam nods, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Well, I guess I’ll see what I can clean up back at home. You boys want to come, sleep in a decent bed?”

Sam glances from him to Dean, who tucks his chin into his collar. There’s no way the conversations coming will be fun. “I think we’ll be good out here. We’ll find someplace to stay and… then get started, I guess.”

Dean nods, straightening a little bit. A demon hunt. That’ll be easy enough, after all the rest of this. “Yeah, sounds good.”

Bobby nods, turns to Ellen, who’s still standing at his elbow with her teeth in her lip and her fists buried deep in her jacket pockets. “And you?”

She shrugs, unearths a hand to shove her hand behind her ears. “Well, first thing I’m going to track Jo down.” Her voice shakes, a bit, and she tilts her chin just slightly back, staring past them towards the graveyard’s edge. “Explain things to her, bury Ash – or what’s left of him.” She clears her throat. “After that, who knows. Maybe she’ll let me tag along, do our part cleaning up all this.”

“Makes sense.” Dean resettles himself, scrapes his foot along the ground. “Well, say hi to her. Heard she’s doing a damn good job.”

“I will. Hell, tell her yourself – I’ve got her cell number now, if you wanna call her.”

“No, no, it’s fine.”

Ellen pauses with her phone half out of her pocket, tilting her head, and Dean shrugs. “It’s fine. I’ve got it too.”

“Oh.” She raises an eyebrow; Dean crosses his arms, looking away. “Well, I’m sure she’d be glad to hear from you.”

“Yeah.” Dean thumbs his phone, swallows hard, and resolves to delete her number later. He’s got a year left; she doesn’t need that kind of crap hanging around.


End file.
